People with memory impairment (“sufferers”) lack an awareness of the actions, events, and experiences of their everyday lives. This lack of continuity in their lives and can lead to confusion, embarrassment, isolation, depression, a loss of independence and sense of self, and impaired decision-making. One common cause of memory impairment is Alzheimer's disease (AD). One of the earliest symptoms of AD and Mild Cognitive Impairment (a condition that often precedes AD) is loss of the ability to recall memories of recent experiences.
Supporting a sufferer through frequent personal contact and the sharing of information relating to people, places and things, whether past, present or future, has many benefits such as a decrease or elimination of the sufferer's sense of isolation, an increase in the sufferer's confidence, independence, and overall quality of life, and possibly an increase in the sufferer's ability to recall memories. All these benefits not only benefit the sufferer, but the sufferer's primary caretaker such as a spouse or adult child of the sufferer, or a hired professional caregiver. Familial primary caretakers more often than not feel overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for the sufferer and a sense of heartbreak and helplessness as they watch a person they love slowly lose their faculties. Both familial and professional primary caretakers desperately seek assistance from other people close to the sufferer such as family and friends. Unfortunately, some such individuals are often geographically distant from the caretaker, making frequent visits impossible, and all too often leads to an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” situation. What's worse, some individuals slowly shy away from contact with the sufferer because communication with someone suffering from memory loss can be extremely difficult and uncomfortable. As a result, the primary caretaker too feels a sense of isolation and despair, sometimes being the only person providing round-the-clock care. Certainly there is a need for an automated means of encouraging the transmission of more frequent and meaningful communications to a sufferer by those who are unable to or uncomfortable with making personal visits.
There have been proposed various methods and apparatus for monitoring and/or assisting individuals with special needs such as those suffering with memory impairment. The following patents are illustrative and incorporated herein by reference: U.S. Pat. No. 5,169,342 entitled, Method of Communication with a Language Deficient Patient; U.S. Pat. No. 5,890,905 entitled, Educational and Life skills Organizer/Memory Aid; U.S. Pat. No. 6,540,674 entitled, System and Method for Supervising People with Mental Disorders; U.S. Pat. No. 6,611,206 entitled, Automatic System for Monitoring independent Person Requiring Occasional Assistance; U.S. Pat. No. 6,828,918 entitled Personalized Accessibility Identification Receiver/Transmitter and Method for Providing Assistance; U.S. Pat. No. 6,950,026 entitled, Method for Complementing Personal Lost Memory Information with Communication, and Communication System, and Information Recording Medium Thereof; U.S. Pat. No. 7,058,208 entitled, Method and Apparatus of Managing Information About a Person; U.S. Pat. No. 7,095,328 entitled, System and Method for Non-Intrusive Monitoring of At Risk Individuals; U.S. Pat. No. 7,409,045 entitled, Lifestyle Multimedia Security System; and U.S. Patent Application 20010040986 entitled, Memory Aid.
The following patents relate to devices used in monitoring the condition or activity level of an individual: U.S. Pat. No. 6,646,873 entitled, Personal Digital Assistant for Connecting with a Communications Module; U.S. Pat. No. 6,774,795 entitled, Electronic Assistant Incorporated in Personal Objects; U.S. Pat. No. 6,812,824 entitled, Method and Apparatus Combining a Tracking System and Wireless Communication System; U.S. Pat. No. 6,856,898 entitled, PDA systems, Functional Data, and Methods to Bias Map matching; U.S. Pat. No. 6,868,074 entitled, Mobile Data Device and Method of Locating Mobile Data Device; U.S. Pat. No. 6,904,363 entitled, System for Local Monitoring; U.S. Pat. No. 7,317,927 entitled, Method and System to Monitor Persons Utilizing Wireless Media; and PCT Publication WO 97/25697 entitled, Method and Apparatus for Monitoring Persons in a Dwelling.
The following patents relate to cognitive testing or learning: U.S. Pat. No. 5,260,869 entitled, Communication and Feedback System for Promoting Development of Physically Disadvantaged Persons; U.S. Pat. No. 6,159,014 entitled, Method and Apparatus for Training of Cognitive and Memory Systems in Humans; U.S. Pat. No. 6,270,456 entitled, Computerized Medical Diagnostic System Utilizing List-Based Processing; U.S. Pat. No. 6,280,198 entitled, Remote Computer Implemented Methods For Cognitive Testing; U.S. Pat. No. 6,513,046 entitled, Storing and Recalling Information to Augment Human Memory; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,524,239 entitled, Apparatus for Non-intrusively Measuring Health Parameters of a Subject and Method of Use Thereof.
None of the above patents, alone or in combination, teach a system, method or apparatus for encouraging caregivers to transmit electronic communications to an individual with impaired memory.
All patents, patent applications, provisional applications, and publications referred to or cited herein, or from which a claim for benefit of priority has been made, are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety to the extent they are not inconsistent with the explicit teachings of this specification.